Miles From Tomorrowland DIY Costumes, Part 1

I love Halloween. I was a theater major in college and a drama teacher for years before having my kids, and I have always loved having an excuse to dress up for pretty much any occasion. Halloween is about as close as you can get in real life to being in a play, and I figure I should take each opportunity I can to dress up with my children while they’re still young enough to enjoy it without being horrifically embarrassed by their dorky mother.

I’ll add a post soon about our Halloween costumes from previous years, but I wanted to get this one published as quickly as I could in case it can help someone else who might be trying to DIY some costumes this year.

All three of my kids are HUGE fans of the show Miles From Tomorrowland on Disney Junior. It’s really a great show – it teaches them a decent amount about space and science, and the show has a lot of excellent roles for female characters. Miles’s mother Phoebe is the captain of the ship, and his sister Loretta is just as intelligent and adventurous as her brother. I know there are going to be a LOT of preschool-aged boys out there this year who are going to be dressing as Miles for Halloween, and G will definitely be one of the crowd. But the twins are also huge fans, and the Tomorrowland characters offer a great opportunity for a family costume.

There’s one major problem. Despite Disney’s obvious efforts to include strong female characters on the show, for reasons I can’t explain, they ONLY decided to release a Miles costume this year. No Loretta. Why, Disney?! What were you thinking? I fully expected to have to make a costume for myself and a minimal version of one for my husband (who doesn’t share my love of crafty costuming, sigh), and I know it would have been a lot to ask for them to mass-produce a MERC costume (he’s a robot ostrich, and THAT is going to be my real DIY nightmare this year), but it bums me out that there are probably a whole lot of little girls out there who want to dress up as Loretta and can’t.

So…I created some designs to print up through Cowcow.com, and I wanted to order one item first to try it out and see how it worked. Unfortunately, Cowcow doesn’t offer children’s sizes, so I tried out a tank top in an adult XS, since the reviews indicated that it runs very small, and I assumed there would be plenty of alterations that would need to be made.

The tank top finally showed up in the mail today, and this is how it fits on a toddler who wears a size 4T:

So obviously it’s going to need some work, haha. I’ll post an update once I’ve altered it and made the black shoulder harness to go with it. Once I received this today, I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the rest of the order that I put together, which had the following items:

Now, here’s the cool thing about Cowcow – it let me set up a shop where other people can purchase the designs I made for our family, and everything they offer comes in sizes XS-3XL. So if you’re in the same boat as I am – if you’ve got a little girl who wants to be Loretta, or you’re trying to put together costumes for the whole family, and you’ve got some crafty sewing skills, you can pick up one of these shirts (or any of my other items) and make it work.

I want to just say this as a caveat – I’ve only personally received the tank top so far, and I can’t speak to the quality of the finished product of any of the other designs until I get them in the mail. I ordered the tank on September 5th and it arrived on September 26th – the company is based in Hong Kong, and the shipping takes an eternity – so if you’re interested in trying these for your Halloween costume, you’re going to have to take a leap of faith on it just like me. I hope it works out well for all of us!

There are always coupons floating around out there for Cowcow.com, and I encourage you to use any you can find that work! In fact, right now until October 12, 2015, you can get 40% off and free shipping on the tank top or the leggings if you use the code “40COWOFF” at checkout, and there’s a 35% off code for the entire site (SALE35OFF) that expires on September 30th, 2015. So hurry and order if you need it, and hopefully you’ll have it in time for Halloween!

17 thoughts on “Miles From Tomorrowland DIY Costumes, Part 1”

Hi. I am trying to make a Loretta Callisto costume for my daughter for Christmas. I have been racking my brain trying to figure out how I am going to do this. I’m so glad I found your site. I looked on the cowcow website and plan to order the leggings an alter them to fit. I tried to get the t-shirt, but it is not showing as available. Only the tank top is showing. If I get the tank top, how can I turn it into the Loretta top with sleeves and purple arm sleeves? Any details you could give me would be very helpful! Thank you! Trena

Thank you for calling that to my attention! I’m not sure what’s going wrong with the CowCow store link – I will try to fix that today. Depending on what size your daughter wears, you may want to go with the tank top anyway, as the t-shirt is a much looser fit. I took a couple pictures of the process of trimming down the tank and adding sleeves, but a lot of it was trial and error. I’ll see if I have enough to put together a post explaining how I did it, though!

Thank you! My daughter is 5 yrs old and wears a 6 to 6x. I saw how big the tank size xs was on your daughter who wears a 4t and thought the xs wouldn’t be quite as big on my daughter. I just wasn’t sure how you got the purple arm sleeves and the white sleeve part that covers the shoulder area if you started with a tank top. I thought if I could get the t-shirt version then I could just have her wear a purple long sleeved shirt or turtleneck underneath it. Anything to make my life easier…lol! Especially since I don’t have a sewing machine and will be doing everything by hand or using sewing tape or glue. I look forward to hearing how you made the top!! I plan to recreate everything you did for the costume! It is so cool!

Trena, I think I’ve figured out a work-around on Cowcow – for the longest time I couldn’t see what was going wrong because the t-shirt shows up fine for me as long as I’m logged in as the store owner. I created a new listing and I *think* it’s working – try this link: http://www.cowcow.com/loretta-women-cotton-tee_p92737625 There are a couple coupons floating around out there right now, too – SALE35OFF should get you 35% off through 11/30, but GDHUNT is 30% off plus free shipping, which may work out to be a better deal (that expires 11/24).

Kim, just wanted to update you – I’ve been in touch with Cowcow and they are still looking into the issue with the women’s shirts (they said it’s fixed but it’s still not working on my end), BUT when I logged on to the site to get the details about the problem, I saw that they now offer children’s sizes! So I put together a new listing for a kid’s sized t-shirt, and if your daughter wears a children’s size, this link should work: http://www.cowcow.com/loretta-callisto-kid-cotton-tee_p94110635

I’m working on an update to the swimwear post with pictures of all the items so you can see how they fit and am hoping to have that up before the end of the week. When I initially made these costumes, CowCow didn’t have the kid’s swimwear available – it would definitely save you a TON of work to just get the swimwear top! I haven’t ordered the T-shirts myself, though, so I can’t say for sure if they’re too baggy or not.

I saw the post of the finished product and they looked GREAT! I have very little sewing ability but could you tell me how you did the accents on the sleeves and neck for Loretta? We just ordered the swim shirt from CowCow. Thanks!

Hello! I used black rib knit fabric, folded it in half so the folded edge faced out, and cut and sewed the neck and shoulders out of that. The yellow reflective stripes were made from reflective bracelets that I bought at Dollar Tree – I removed the metal insert from the reflective sleeve, cut my stripes out of it, and sewed them down to the rib knit. I tried gluing, but I couldn’t find a glue that would hold that reflective plastic. My sewing machine went through it just fine, though :).

I used rib knit because that’s what I had on hand from the remnant bin, but I think just about any black fabric with a little thickness to it would work fine. The shoulder decorations can be tacked on easily with a few stitches, but with the neck, you might want to consider making the collar attach separately (possibly with Velcro) because you want to make sure the neck can stretch enough to go over the head!

I hope that helps. Please feel free to email me at rocketmommyblog@gmail.com if you have any questions about it, and I’ll see what I can do to explain it further!

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About Me

I’m Katrina. I’m a stay-at-home mom with three little kids and a lot of fun ideas of things to do with them. G, my oldest, is currently fascinated by all things space. The twins (g and C) want to do everything he does, so with three budding astronauts in the house, I’m their Rocket Mommy. So climb aboard my rocketship and let’s go on an adventure together!